


Accidental Assistance

by DonnaClaireHolmes



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 12:42:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13547556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DonnaClaireHolmes/pseuds/DonnaClaireHolmes
Summary: Doctor Strange returns to the hospital out of boredom, but get's intrigued by a young girl's surgery.





	Accidental Assistance

The sanctum was considerably quiet that day. The apprentices had gone home for the weekend, Wong was held up in the library as normal, and Stephen was incredibly bored. Not your normal hit-your-head-on-a-wall bored, more like shooting-through-a-spray-painted-smiley-face-in-the-living-room-wall kind of bored. He paced around the New York sanctum, with the cloak floating just behind him.

  
“Stop! I need to do something!” He snapped at the cloak, who immediately shied away from its master. “I’m sorry, it’s just…. The universe is safe at the moment, so what do we do now?” The cloak pointed to the door, and Stephen knew exactly where he was meant to go.

  
Christine hadn’t heard from Stephen in months, not since his friend died in the OR and he fell on the ground for some reason. She was fine with that. She knew they weren’t going to be anything more than friends and she accepted it. Still, another email would’ve been nice. She was not expecting him to show up at the nurses station in his scrubs on a random Tuesday in August.

  
“Stephen?” What else was she supposed to say? Hey! How’s it going today? No. She was correct to question his presence.  
“Hi, Christine.” He looked at her with those puppy dog eyes she knew she couldn’t say no to. Not after what happened in the OR that night. “I needed something to do and figured I might be useful here.” She looked down at his hands holding a file. They were shaking even worse than before.

  
“You know you can’t operate.”  
“No, I know, I just… maybe I could assist Nic in surgery? I see he has a brain stem glioma removal on a child this afternoon. I could scrub in and make sure he doesn’t kill the kid.” And there was his cold sense of humor that she hated. Her face told him exactly that.  
“Sorry, I just want to be useful.”

  
“I thought what you were doing was helpful. You know, to the world?”  
“Yeah, the world’s fine right now, so I figured I might be useful elsewhere, right?” Christine sighed. She knew that nothing she said would turn him away.

  
“Nic’s in the patient’s room going over the procedure with her family. Just don’t say anything to upset them, alright?”  
“Got it. Not speaking at all usually does the trick.”  
The family seemed relatively ok with his presence, even though he felt so out of place. Nick was loving the fact that Stephen felt so uncomfortable, never missing an opportunity to make it worse.

  
“Doctor Strange will be assisting me. Well, not really assisting me, his hands never healed correctly after a deadly car crash and he’ll probably never hold a scalpel again. But, this is actually his first operation back at the hospital!” Nic clapped. The parents looked worried, but they clapped too. So did the nurses in the room.

  
Nic had taken the parents outside to sign some final paperwork, leaving Stephen with the girl to take her vitals. He grabbed his stethoscope to check her heartbeat, but before he could hear a beat she grabbed his hand in hers. She looked concerned, with his hand in hers, stroking her thumbs over his scars.

  
“I’m going to have this on my head, right?” Not even ten years old, and this girl was going through a rough procedure that no one should have to have. Stephen just sat there and looked at his hands in hers. Her small, soft, unscared hands that stroked his own.  
“I’m afraid so.” He got the courage to look up at her, which was a mistake. Her eyes were red and filled with tears. She was terrified. She probably thought she would never have hair again. “But you’ll draw, and write, type, maybe even become a doctor yourself. You’ll have your hands, your hair, you legs.” She let out a sigh of relief and the tears fell from her eyes. “You’re going to be just fine.” Stephen genuinely smiled for the first time in a long time. Before he even got out another word she leaned forward and hugged him. He froze for a second, but accepted the hug, putting his arm around her.

  
The surgery was that afternoon, so the rest of Stephen’s day was spent with Nic making his rounds and checking on patients while the girl got prepped for surgery. Three o’clock rolled around and Stephen was scrubbing in to the surgery. The smell of the antiseptics and cleaners brought him back to the day the Ancient One died.

  
_Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all._  
 _Which is?_  
 _It’s not about you._

  
The surgery was even in the same OR. Stephen knew he shouldn’t be there, that he was far from ready to return to the hospital. But there was something in that little girl’s eyes that made him stay. Something about her made him want to save her even more.  
The surgery started off fine, with Nic opening up the back of the skull and making a path to the spinal cord. That’s about as good as it got. The tumor was larger than any scan had shown, and was pushing up against her brain. It had sprouted itself into various other segments of the brain as well.

  
“Shit….” Nic was sweating. Ne was a good doctor, but nowhere near as good as Stephen. Nic turned to his colleague with what can only be described as pleading in his eyes. He knew he used to be a jerk to Stephen, and he knew he didn’t deserve his help.  
“Doctor Strange, will you come over and take a look.” Stephen, who had been hiding in a corner, decided to make his way over. It didn’t matter anymore that Nic was operating, it mattered that this little girl was being operated on.

  
He came up to the table and assessed the situation, like any onlooking doctor would. Stephen concentrated on where exactly the tumor was stretching to.  
“I need a pair of clamps.” He said, as if he had a plan. His plan at that moment was to give a gentle tug and hope for the best. Stephen grabbed onto the tumor and with one small pull, the tumor was out whole and in his hand. It looked as if a small potato was creating its own roots, but it was all there. No broken pieces or anything. Both Nic and Stephen were in shock.

  
“But… it’s out. It looks like it’s out whole. Strange, how did you do that?” Nic was slightly irritated that Strange had managed to do something, that would’ve taken him hours to complete, in just one second.  
“I… I don’t know. It was like it wasn’t even stuck.”  
“That’s impossible.” Nic laughed for a second. “What did you do, Strange? Did you use magic or something?” Stephen froze for a split second.

  
“Magic? Come on, Nic, you know magic isn’t real.” He looked down at his hands which, for the first time since the accident, weren’t shaking at all.  
Or maybe it was magic.

  
A month later a letter was found under the door of the New York sanctum simply addressed to Doctor Strange. Stephen opened it in the main hall, taking a seat on a couch to read it.

  
“Dear Doctor Strange. Thank you for operating on me! Doctor West told me and my parents that you were the one to remove the tumor, after he had worked on it for hours. He said he’d let you have that good feeling of finishing it. Also, my hair is growing back already! It’s really fuzzy right now and I like it. I hope you’re hands are doing better. Thanks again!  
~Illyana Rasputina”

  
Stephen read the name again. He knew it from somewhere, but he just couldn’t figure out where…

**Author's Note:**

> I know none of this is canon. I don't even know if Magik and Doctor Strange met in the comics, I just thought it would be cool to have the current Sorcerer Supreme save a future Sorceress Supreme.


End file.
